warping for tempo fix help

[Fritz]

have a demo track that a band played live. The drummer is way off, but the rest of the band is pretty tight despite some tempo drift.
The tempo drift is what I want to fix.
All clips are the same length.
I picked a master track to marker up, in this case, the piano.
I've markered it up thru the song, on the one of every 8 bars (1, 9, 17, 25, etc). Don't want it to be too mechanical.
I want to set the tempo of the verse at # and the chorus at #+.
Do I pull the markers to the correct bar number and then set the tempo change?
How & where do I set the tempo change.
In the "Master" track or in the Tempo box of the arrangement?

[yur2die4]

If you have a main reference track, you can use that as the ‘Leader’. Have the other clips unwarped when you drag them in and align them with the Leader clip.

Since the Leader clip is designating the tempo it isn’t really being ‘stretched’. So everything else should at least be the same length of clip as long as they’re aligned above one another. Then you can turn on warp and have it apply the same
markers. … I’m kind of in a rush so, I may have forgotten some of this process. The key though is to have all the clips have the Same markers one way or another and aligned. (Or just the piano track, and align the other clips.. can even have an Unwarped version of the Piano track and mute the warped version such that you’re only using it as a reference via its Leader tempo function).

So now you go to the drum clip and those markers you can tweak to taste. Just warp it how you’d warp anything else. If it drifts, you might have to jump in and find the ‘furthest drifting’ point’ within an 8 bar section and add a marker and drag that. It should pull everything else closer to the grid.

[Fritz]

I picked the main piano to Leader warp as it was the best bet without drums.
But it starts on the and before 1.
Warp marked every 8 bars and dragged to grid.
Ended up at ~114.
Set master tempo to 114 and played back the warped piano against the metronome in solo and it's good.
But when I go to highlight the other tracks to get them to warp follow, they don't get warp markers and they sure ain't in sync.
All the tracks are the same length.
Pretty sure the issue has to do with setting the 1.1.1 correctly.
What am I doing wrong?

[Tarekith]

Make sure the clip start marker is at the beginning of the clip for all of the parts. Sometimes Live dorks it and moves those for some odd reason.

[Fritz]

nope, that looks right.

[yur2die4]

Yeah. This is a tricky practice that is easier for me to do in person than explain. So I’ll try to address some points you brought up.

You shouldn’t be able to set the temp. The tempo should be determined by the clip automatically if it is set as the Leader.

The clips’ ‘start’ points sometimes get fudged by Ableton Live. Make sure the start points on all clips are all the way to the start of the clip.

Also make sure they’re unwarped before aligning them with the piano clip. The piano clip’s beginning might be a little off-grid.

I think personally, I usually align them before doing the warping. Then I set the reference clip to Lead, and warp it. Since they’re already aligned and the other clips should be Unwarped, I select all and drag all their left-most clip start to the downbeat on my reference (I can extend them again later, it just makes it easier to ensure I can then place the ‘start’ of all clips on the same grid line without guesswork).

The warping, it has been a while for me, so getting it to bring markers from the leader clip to the follow clips is a step that I’m trying to remember exactly how I did it. But if I recall there should Also be a method for replacing a warped audio clip with another audio clip of the same length. I don’t usually use that method.

With a bit more playing around. And seeing what happens when you do one step and another, you might be able to start over where you close the program, remove the analysis files. Open a fresh set, drag the clips in, and try to get the routine down. I’m sure it’s frustrating. And I’m doing what I can to share my approach. For all I know there could be some easier methods.

The clips should stay in sync though after piano has been warped of it is the Lead, and if the other clips are Not warped.

[[jur]]

Hey Fritz, please don't double post.
I merged the 2 threads.

[Fritz]

I had it right when I pulled back the warped piano start flag.
But now I've screwed it up again and sync is gone.
argh!

[Fritz]

started from scratch and dragged in the clips.
they're all aligned unwarped.
warp the piano, still aligned.

Now I'll put in markers for every 8 bars on the 1.
And a couple on 4 bars based on phrases.
Still in sync, only piano is warped and marked.

Now I want to change the drifting tempo of all tracks to 117.
It had drifted from 112 to 118 ish.
How to do that?

Obviously, metronome is not in sync coz of the drift.

Years ago I did it with ease.
Now I can remember.

grrrrrrrr

[yur2die4]

So. If the piano track is warped. And is set to be the Leader, the metronome should be somewhat close to on beat with it.

The sort of tricky part is that this depends on how the clip is placed on the arrangement timeline. And this also means being careful and ensuring that if you move the piano clip, all other clips should be carefully moved as well.

Not sure exactly how things are going. But it sounds like you’re making incremental progress? The hardest part is basically just, understanding how to convey what you’re trying to do, into a program that basically can stretch audio, or stretch itself to the audio, but you need to keep in mind that the software doesn’t magically know what you’re trying to do, and certain things can cause the results to mess up.

Anyway. Once a lead track is set, and the tempo matches the metronome, you should be able to turn Warp on for the other clips that are aligned, and they’d hopefully take on the exact same markers.

I don’t know if Live has changed that.
Alternatively, there might be a way to do replacing clips with markers with different audio. I haven’t tried that method but I’m pretty sure I read about it in the manual at one time.

Once all the clips have the Same warp markers, you can turn Leader off. Then, instead of Live’s tempo being set by the clip, Live will force its tempo, and the clips will stretch to be in that tempo.

[Fritz]

part of the issue is the piano starts on the and before 1 so the met is off from the get go.
I set 1.1.1 to the 1 of the first bar and warp from here straight.
Is there a Grid setting that needs to be set.?

I was thinking that I could set warp markers every 8 and drag them and audio to 1, 9, 17, etc bars.
For the most part, they are not far off when I try this, but when I export or re-record the result, the drift hasn't improved.

Don't so much care about the met, just that the tracks follow the piano warp and are ~114, not ~111 to ~117.

Seem to remember some automation with this too.

My intention is to export the warped track as .wav and import into PT to do other odubs and mix.
But at a more consistent, not perfect tempo. Hence the every 8 bar thinking.
If that makes my idea clearer.